


A Farewell at Elba

by Cinaed



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Historical RPF, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Art History, Canonical Character Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Epistolary, Gen, Newspaper Articles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>50-Year-Old Mystery Over the Identity of the Soldier in "A Farewell at Elba" Solved</b> </p><p>A recently uncovered letter by British captain John Aubrey solves one part of the Gros mystery that has puzzled art historians for over half a century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Farewell at Elba

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know who to blame for this. sath, probably, because otherwise I wouldn't know who Gros was, much less have feelings about him. And MissM, who got me pumped full of Georges Pontmercy sadness yesterday.

**50-Year-Old Mystery Over the Identity of the Soldier in **"A Farewell at Elba"**  Solved**

_A recently uncovered letter by British captain John Aubrey solves one part of the Gros mystery that has puzzled art historians for over half a century._

March 16, 2014

For over fifty years, an obscure painting by Antoine-Jean Gros, a French neoclassical painter best known for his paintings of the French emperor Napoléon Bonaparte, has left art historians with more questions than answers.

Numerous questions surround the history and origin of the painting, called  _A Farewell at Elba_ , which depicts Napoléon on the beach of Elba and a distraught soldier saluting him from the departing ship.

The painting was discovered in 1961 in an abandoned cottage near the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Although it was quickly verified as one of Gros’s works, historians were not able to learn anything more about the painting. It was not known when Gros painted it, whether or not it was a commission, or even the name of the soldier openly weeping as he saluted the exiled Napoléon. 

However a recent discovery of a cache of letters written by the renowned British naval officer Captain John Aubrey to his close friend naturalist and author Stephen Maturin appears to identify the soldier. 

Although French and Austrian soldiers would guard Napoléon on the island until his escape the following year, Aubrey was ordered by the Crown to oversee the passage of the exiled emperor from France to Elba and to ensure that Napoléon did not succeed with a second suicide attempt. 

In a letter written May 5, 1814, the day after Napoléon’s arrival at Elba, Aubrey recounts the moment which apparently inspired Gros, who had accompanied Napoléon to the island, to create  _A Farewell at Elba_ :

 

> We had left [Napoléon] on shore with his Austrian escorts, to be taken straightaway to Portoferraio, when one of the French soldiers stepped to the railing and saluted, shouting, "Vive le Emperor!" 
> 
> I do not know how it happens that he was allowed on board the ship at all, for he was certainly Bonaparte’s man through and through, but after his outburst he was dragged out of sight rather quickly and kept, I suspect, locked in his room for the remainder of the voyage out of sheer embarrassment on the captain’s part.
> 
> Still, the image stays with me. Stephen, picture a tall man with a military bearing, his hair just beginning to turn white, his features tanned nearly black. Now imagine the man standing at the railing, his arm raised in a salute, his face alight with a fervor so bright as to be almost blinding, either unconscious of or uncaring of the tears streaming down his face. Good God, you are probably laughing now as you read these lines! Jack Aubrey, moved almost to poetry over some weeping Frenchman.
> 
> It took quite a bit of trouble, for the captain was determined to pretend the incident had not happened, but at last I managed to get the name of the soldier from him. Do you remember hearing of that cunning devil who brought that Genoese pinnacle to bear upon eight of our vessels and outfoxed them enough to capture one of our ships? It was the very same man, a captain by the name of Pontmercy.   
> 
> I wish I might have spoken with him, for you must understand my intense curiosity and desire to hear his perspective of that particular battle, but the d——-ed captain refused to let me near Pontmercy, and I did not see the man again, despite all my efforts.

With the assistance of military historians, the ‘Captain Pontmercy’ has now been identified as Georges Pontmercy, a name frequently found in military memoirs, biographies, and the newspapers of the time. The list of battles Pontmercy fought in is too numerous to name, although the most notable and most recounted in military memoirs is the battle of Waterloo, where Napoléon himself awarded Pontmercy a promotion to colonel and the title of baron and named him an officer of the Legion of Honor.

At the battle of Austerlitz, where Pontmercy earned the cross, he served under the general Comte Henri Gatien Bertrand. In his memoirs, Bertrand recounts what he witnessed at Waterloo:

 

> At Waterloo, Pontmercy was chief of a squadron of cuirassiers, in Dubois’ brigade. It was he who captured the standard of the Lunenburg battalion. I saw him as he came and cast the flag at the Emperor’s feet. He was covered with blood. While tearing down the banner he had received a sword-cut across his face. The Emperor, greatly pleased, shouted to him: "You are a colonel, you are a baron, you are an officer of the Legion of Honor!" Pontmercy is said to have replied: "Sire, I thank you for my widow," although I did not myself hear that part of the exchange, being distracted by another assault from the left.

Much less is known about Pontmercy’s personal life. He married a woman by the name of Juliette Gillenormand, and together they had a son, Marius, who would in 1846 become a member of the National Assembly and advocate for education and provisions for the poor.

However, from what little is known of his personal life, it appears that Pontmercy seems, like Gros, to have reached his zenith alongside Napoléon. After his wife died shortly after the battle of Waterloo, Pontmercy’s son went to live with his wife’s family in Paris and Pontmercy was exiled to Vernon, a small town seventy-five miles outside the capital. In 1827, he died there impoverished.

It would be only eight years later that Gros, whose popularity had waned after the fall of his emperor, would be found drowned on the bank of the Seine, although scholars continue to debate the idea his death was a suicide as well as the legitimacy of a note supposedly in his pocket which stated: "Tired of life, and betrayed by last faculties which rendered it bearable, he had resolved to end it.." 

However, despite this discovery which has excited both art and military historians alike, there are still many questions surrounding  _A Farewell at Elba_. The work could have been painted at any point between May 1814 to shortly before Gros’s death in 1835. 

There is nothing to indicate whether it was a commission by a nostalgic veteran or whether Gros was moved enough to paint it himself, although art historians note that the painting is unlike any other work Gros did involving Napoléon. Instead of having the emperor as the pivotal figure of the piece, the other people in the painting almost afterthoughts, Gros grants Napoléon and Pontmercy equal focus. There is also an intensity and craftsmanship to the painting that had been absent since  _Bonaparte at the pont d’Arcole_ (1801) and  _Bonaparte Visiting the Plague House at Jaffa_  (1804) that historians argue indicates Gros may have painted the piece for personal reasons, perhaps moved by Pontmercy’s devotion. 

Several historians theorize that Gros and Pontmercy might even have encountered each other over the years of Napoléon’s reign. Pontmercy fought at Alexandria and was part of Napoléon’s forces that inspired Gros’s  _Napoleon at the Pyramids_  (1810). 

However it is where  _A Farewell at Elba_  was discovered in 1961 that utterly confounds historians. There are no records of sale for the piece, nor did Gros ever write of the painting to his mother or friends. 

How it came to be in an abandoned cottage in a neighborhood of Paris Gros was not known to frequent, forgotten for almost a hundred and thirty years, remains a mystery unlikely to be solved unless historians discover another valuable cache of letters. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. All of the Gros paintings except for _A Farewell at Elba_ actually exist.
> 
> 2\. The cottage is Mabeuf's house, in case you wanted more sad old men feels. 
> 
> 3\. Comte Henri Gatien Bertrand was a real general in the army, and did fight at Austerlitz. Marius in the book visits a "Comte H" and some quick Googling made Bertrand seem the likeliest person.
> 
> 4\. All of the military stuff Georges Pontmercy does in the fic is actually from the novel. Pontmercy is badass. And he did accompany Napoléon to Elba, although I don't think Gros actually did.


End file.
